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Hello.
Simple question: do you base buildings that you use for terrain pieces?
I can see the upside and the downside. Personally I don't think I'm going
to. I figure I can always go back and add it if I need to later.
Thanks for any input.

Most of mine are not, however, if I were going to make a more scenery style terrain piece, then I probably would.

Most of my terrain is based.
Since it is used on flat tables (which might have some details painted on (roads/creeks/etc) and all of our other (club) terrain is also modular, it makes it last longer. We've had our boards and club terrain for the better part of 10 years now.
The CoD buildings benefit from it (it makes it harder to pull them apart) IMO.

In my opinion, terrain should be based. For one, it gives you more modelling opportunity (a ruin without debris is just strange), and it makes it clear without a doubt where the terrain feature begins and where it ends.

I have a mixture of based, unbased and moveable based terrain, illustrated in these two pictures.





The large hill pieces are based on thin plastic card. Since these flex too much, I am currently gluing them down on to 3mm hardboard.

The alien cactus forests are individually based on 3mm MDF shapes. These shapes are placed on larger cutouts of sandpaper, to form big chunks of area terrain.

The buildings are mostly freestanding or attached on bases which fit them fairly exactly.

Some other features such as the supply dumps, are based on DVDs.

I'm making some more pieces at the moment, which will nest easily for storage and transport purposes.

Basically (ha ha) you should use whatever type of terrain fits your needs.

currently i'm building some Pegasus buildings and they seem so thick and sturdy that i don't think
i need to. i could see it on hills and trees. and even the GW buildings though.

I like static boards the best. Based terrain looks unrealistic but allows for modeling oppertunities but static boards are the best because they look really realistic and have endless modeling oppertunities.

alarmingrick wrote:currently i'm building some Pegasus buildings and they seem so thick and sturdy that i don't think
i need to. i could see it on hills and trees. and even the GW buildings though.

When building terrain, the issue is how many points of contact each part of the terrain has. A Pegasus/COD building in an intact square/rectangle will have contacts to the left and the right and possibly above for each component. That's a sturdy piece of terrain and could survive without a base. If you have an open (ruined) building with terrain parts with just 1 point of contact, these will need a base or be smashed to pieces in a matter of weeks.